Blizzard fans can look forward to not just one, but two Diablo games currently in development. Diablo 4 is obviously the big upcoming release that most core Blizzard fans are looking forward to. But Diablo Immortal, Blizzard's mobile game, may surprise Blizzard fans with how popular it will be. That's a sentiment that Blizzard shares. In a recent Blizzard quarterly earnings call, Activision COO Daniel Alegre described playtesting impressions of Diablo Immortal as "hugely enthusiastic."
According to Alegre, Diablo Immortal was made playable in an internal testing environment during the company's third quarter. The response is assumedly coming from Blizzard employees, so it should be taken with some skepticism. Nevertheless, it's notable that Alegre is confident enough to talk about it publicly.
Additionally, Alegre also mentions that Blizzard will soon be expanding Diablo Immortal's playtesting. The next round of testing will expand to "external regional testing," meaning that testing groups in certain regions across the world will soon get to play the game. These tests won't be available publically, and they may not even be drawn from Blizzard's open registration testing pool, but it does show how far the game's development has progressed. It's an important step in moving toward publically available testing.
It's been some time since Blizzard said much of anything about Diablo Immortal. A short trailer was released for Diablo Immortal as part of the ChinaJoy 2020 convention, as China appears to be a major target market for Diablo Immortal. Beyond that, in February Blizzard announced plans for Diablo Immortal to begin testing phases in 2020, and clearly, the company has now delivered on that promise. To be fair, they said regional testing would begin mid-2020, not late 2020, so it seems some development delays have come through.
Delays in planned development milestones are quite understandable given the nature of 2020. Blizzard's mid-2020 testing plans were announced before the pandemic had taken root, and dozens of other games have had their development schedules hampered and delayed since. If not for the COVID-19 pandemic, Diablo Immortal may very well have progressed to public testing at this point. It may even have had a release date announced.
As things stand, it'll still be some time before further news regarding Diablo Immortal is shared. January 2021 seems like the earliest opportunity as part of further Activision Blizzard fiscal reporting. If not, then BlizzCon 2021 in February should be able to confirm the current status of the game's development. By then, a release date, or at least further testing plans, should be confirmed. In the meantime, Diablo fans will have to be content with the brief details that have been shared.
Diablo Immortal is in development for mobile devices.
Source: MP1st